Apple working on droppable iPod drives
By Peter Rojas 
posted Dec 24th 2004 1:46AM
posted Dec 24th 2004 1:46AM
We know it's heresy among the Apple faithful to even suggest that one might be so displeased with one's iPod as to
throw it on the ground in disgust, but since occasionally the little bundles of joy do get dropped, Apple has applied
for a patent for a portable media player hard drive that can detect when it is falling and stop reading or writing to
the drive in order to prevent (or at least minimize) data loss or damage. Yes, IBM introduced something similar last
year (and how non-catchy were they when they tried to compare it to an airbag for hard drives?), but Apple's
patent filing actually predates that by a few months.
[Thanks, Tyler]
the "sensor" is really just a mic that picks up you yelling "oh shit!" as your iPod is falling.
The OQO already has this.
Thanks to a special warranty my mate's iPod gets dropped whenever a new version comes out. Sometimes the tough little iPod slips through his fingers several times before it breaks
I always wondered if such a thing were possible, seeing as the damage would be lessened with the hard drive off.
I've been lucky so far, but I would hate to break my iPod due to dropping it..
Okay Apple, Sony's HD player has been shipping with this feature for months. I think I read about another player here that does this as well!
You would think with Apple's "wholistic" design philosophy, they would have incorporated something like this from the beginning. Everyone knows portable anythings get dropped from time to time.
so when it detects acceleration the hard drive locks? how can it tell the difference between being thrown against a wall and going 0-60 in one of those ipodded bmws? =)
Hopefully this won't eat up any more of the battery life. That would be terrible.
IBM has had hard drive drop protection built into every modern Thinkpad since the mid-90's.
OQO used IBM's hard drive protection for their UPC.